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John Podesta, Shepherd of a Government in Exile

WASHINGTON — John D. Podesta, co-chairman of President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team, has spent the last five years building up liberals’ policy-making muscle as president of a lavishly financed research organization, the Center for American Progress.

Founded in 2003 by Mr. Podesta, who was chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, the center has grown into a 180-employee, $25-million-a-year star in the constellation of Washington “think tanks,” amounting to a government in exile for liberal policy experts. Its roster includes other prominent veterans of the Clinton administration, among them Gene B. Sperling and Laura Tyson, both former White House economic advisers.

The center does not disclose who finances its activities, a policy it is declining to change even as Mr. Podesta prepares to wield influence over the shape of the Obama administration.

“Some donors choose to make public what they are giving us, but others don’t, and we respect that,” said Jennifer M. Palmieri, the center’s senior vice president for communications.

The lack of transparency is hardly unique. The law does not require such organizations to say who their contributors are, and most conceal their donors’ identities, in part to keep from being raided by rivals, said James G. McGann, director of the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program at the University of Pennsylvania.

Still, scattered news reports over the last five years have identified several Democratic-leaning donors who have provided millions of dollars to Mr. Podesta’s project, and Ms. Palmieri did not dispute those names.

They include the billionaire investor George Soros; Peter B. Lewis, chairman of Progressive Insurance; the Hollywood producer Steve Bing; and Herb and Marion Sandler, who made billions in the mortgage industry before selling their company in 2006 and who have given about $20 million to the project.

In addition, a database of grants from charitable foundations that is maintained by the Foundation Center, a philanthropy group, shows that from 2003 to 2007, the Center for American Progress received about $15 million in grants from 58 foundations.

Professor McGann said such research organizations all shared the problem of maintaining independence from donors. But, he said, Mr. Podesta’s may be less susceptible to conflicts of interest than those financed primarily by a single patron.

Photo

John D. Podesta founded the Center for American Progress, where he was visited two years ago by his onetime boss.Credit
Doug Mills/The New York Times

“When there is a range of funders,” he said, “even if they are all left of center,” the beneficiary is not “beholden to any one of them or any single group.”

Mr. Podesta did not respond to an interview request made through Ms. Palmieri. But she emphasized that he had set up the Center for American Progress in a way to keep it at arm’s length from its patrons.

“You want to be careful that you are able to maintain autonomy in your work,” she said. “So our donors and our board members don’t direct policy projects or weigh in on our policy positions. And we don’t accept donations for directed work” — that is, work in which donors want their money used to study a specific issue.

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After the Clinton administration, Mr. Podesta initially worked as a lobbyist, taking on clients like the Nevada Resort Association and the American Insurance Association. But after the Republican sweep in the 2002 midterm elections, he decided to focus on helping Democrats rebuild.

He observed that a leading source of the Republicans’ success was their superior intellectual infrastructure: institutions outside government that helped develop and communicate pragmatic conservative ideas, even when the party was not in power.

Mr. Podesta focused on building a liberal counterweight to the conservative Heritage Foundation, a well-financed group that has funneled experts into government positions and produces readable policy reports for Congress. That counterweight became the Center for American Progress.

Among those he has recruited there are Jeanne M. Lambrew, a former White House health adviser, and several former officials of the National Security Council, including Morton H. Halperin, Gayle Smith and P. J. Crowley. The center was also home to other prominent Democrats looking for a perch during the period of Republican hegemony, including Tom Daschle, the former majority leader who lost his Senate seat in 2004, and Elizabeth Edwards, wife of former Senator John Edwards.

Mr. Podesta has also poured money into building up liberal political communications. The center schedules events that often end up being shown on C-Span; sponsors about 60 liberal college newspapers; hosts a prominent blog, ThinkProgress.org; and provides a free downloadable daily news package called Mic Check for liberal radio stations to broadcast.

With Democrats back in control of the executive branch, the question now, Professor McGann said, is whether the center will keep going. If its policy experts all leave for government jobs, he said, it could collapse as quickly as it rose.

Mr. Podesta, for one, plans to stay. On Wednesday, when he was named to the transition team, he sent an e-mail message to the center’s staff pledging that “I will not be joining the new administration and will return to American Progress after the transition ends.”